One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir (24 page)

I spent July and August training for and organizing Ride FAR and working with designers to lay out the brain book. Lorene worked and went for late-night swims while I pored over book proofs. She stopped asking if I would join her. I had become so unromantic. A swim = a drive in the car + getting wet + a wet drive in the car. I just wanted to lie down.

I was lonely.
What about her, do you think she likes swimming alone?
And I felt guilty. This wasn’t the life I’d promised Lorene in front of the fireplace a year ago.

I wished I was someone who wanted to swim at night, but as any infertile person will tell you, wishing won’t make it so.

In A Parallel Universe

Ride FAR 8 was a success
. We raised a record $140,000 for HIV/AIDS service organizations, and I was in fine physical form: drug-free since the methotrexate injection three months earlier.

Biking 100 miles a day for 5 days gives you the feeling that you can do anything.
Except the one thing.

My three-month hiatus gave people plenty of time to reflect on my infertility:

More than one person had asked me why I wasn’t adopting. The answer I gave—I wasn’t adopting because I wasn’t done trying to get pregnant—wasn’t entirely honest. (Nothing says you have to give a highly personal question a highly honest answer.) And the answer I gave myself—I was too afraid of the unknowns, the genetics and the physical and mental health histories—wasn’t entirely truthful. The truth (which I didn’t know back then) was, I was too afraid of the knowns. You begin an adoption, you end up with a child. Some small part of me preferred leaving my outcome to chance.

I was ready to get back on the baby project. When I called Boston IVF, I was transferred to the insurance liaison. Now that I was forty-one, my insurance wanted me to “pass a Clomid challenge” before they would authorize more treatment.

DAY 1: Bloodwork

DAYS 5–9: Take two 50 mg tablets of Clomid

DAY 10: Bloodwork

Pass
= Estradiol rising, FSH dropping

I called a friend on Day 2 to ask her what Clomid was like. “I’m surprised they’re putting you on it,” she said. “It’s for people in their thirties.” I wanted to remind her that forty-one wasn’t so far out of my thirties, but I explained it was just a test. “I don’t remember it being any big deal. It kind of makes you more . . . you,” she said. “Higher highs, lower lows. PMS plus.”

I felt nothing one way or the other on Clomid. My personal challenge was remembering to take it twice a day. On the third day, the Saturday after our new housecleaners came, I couldn’t find my Clomid anywhere. The pharmacy agreed to refill the prescription.

I was out $54 (small change in the fertility accounting department) but I was still in the game. I passed the challenge. Another small victory, another roadblock circumvented.

In November 2003, we picked up where we’d left off back in May.